By Renee Worthing
Register Reporter
 

School consolidation “fix-up” legislation, meant to remove problems with the school budget validation process, was enacted April 18, but because it will not got into effect until July 18, will complicate the voting process in Sanford.
During the May 6 Sanford Town Council meeting, councilors blasted Legislators in Augusta.
Councilor Brad Littlefield said the voting process is not the town council’s fault.
“It’s the meatheads in the Legislature who knew this problem and chose not to do anything about it,” Littlefield said.
Chairman Joe Hanslip said the axiom “a camel is a horse designed by a committee” is “appropriate” to describe the referendum process.
In the final 24 hours of the Legislative session, the Legislature chose to fold LD 2280 into LD 2323, creating LD 2323 as the single consolidation fix-up bill.  The final package, failing to be enacted by a two-thirds “super-majority” vote in the House and Senate as an emergency bill, will not be effective until July 18. As a result, several parts of that law will not go into effect in time to help town and city election clerks administer the validation process already underway.
 Sanford Town Meeting will vote on the school department budget and essential programs and services (EPS) funding on May 27. Residents will then vote on the school budget during a June 5 referendum.
According to the new law, however, absentee ballots must be mailed out beginning May 20, seven days prior to Town Meeting, Sanford Town Clerk Claire Morrison said.
 According to the Maine Municipal Association Web site, under the terms of the school consolidation law enacted in 2007, election clerks in municipal school systems must provide one of two possible ballots to people wishing to cast an absentee ballot at the validation referendum vote. The required wording of one possible ballot is a straightforward ballot question –“Do you favor approving the Sanford School Department budget for the upcoming school year that was adopted at the latest Town Meeting?”
The required wording of the other ballot characterizes the school budget as being greater than the EPS allocation –“Do you favor approving the Sanford School Department budget for the upcoming school year that was adopted at the latest Sanford school budget meeting and that includes locally raised funds that exceed the required local contribution as described in the Essential Programs and Services Funding Act?”  A “yes” vote allows additional funds to be raised for K-12 public education and a “no” vote means additional funds cannot be raised for K-12 public education.
Morrison said the response EPS question, by itself, is going to be voted by secret ballot at Town Meeting.
“That determines which absentee ballot is going to be used,” Morrison said.
She said two ballots, one canary yellow and one “salmon colored” will be mailed to voters who request an absentee ballot. A letter instructing voters to call the town clerk or check the town’s Web site on May 28 will accompany the ballots.
“The ballots cannot be mailed until May 28, the day after Town Meeting, if they want their vote to count,” Morrison said.
She said the yellow ballot includes the EPS funding question, while the salmon colored one does not.
While LD 2323 eliminates conflicting ballot questions and creates a single question that can be printed well in advance of the referendum, it will not go into effect until July.
Councilors and Morrison also took issue with the possibility of multiple voting days in a short period of time and the time it would take to prepare.
“If the referendum fails, the town will have to have another Town Meeting at least 10 days after June 5 and a warrant has to be signed and absentee ballots mailed seven days prior, which makes it June 9, and then another referendum 10 days later,” Morrison said.
Littlefield called the referendum process  “convoluted” and said it was a good reason to abolish Town Meeting.
“We have every reason to get rid of Town Meeting because of this process that has been forced on us,” he said. “Come July, if we haven’t validated a budget, the last budget that was submitted– not approved– will become the budget without anybody’s approval in the budget approval process.”
According to LD2323, An Act To Remove Barriers to the Reorganization of School Administrative Units, if a budget fails to pass before July 1, the latest budget approved at a regional school unit budget meeting and submitted to the voters for validation at a referendum is automatically considered the budget for operational expenses for the ensuing year until a final budget is approved.
“I cannot even believe they could sit up there in Augusta and let this happen,” Councilor Anne Marie Mastraccio said. “We expect people to vote June 5 and again June 10 for primary elections and possibly again for another Town Meeting [if the referendum does not pass]. This is a recipe for disaster.”
“When it comes to people having the ability to decide on whether or not their taxes rise, they are going to vote no,” Littlefield said. “They are not going to let their taxes rise and the school budget will go down to defeat. We are going to be stuck with a budget the people don’t want.”
Mastraccio wanted to know what would happen if the town continued with its usual process and did not conduct the referendum vote
“I agree it’s a crazy process, but the advice we are getting is we need to go through with the process,” Town Manager Mark Green said.
Morrison also said the town would have to set up polling stations on June 4 for the referendum vote on June 5, remove them on June 6 and erect them again on June 9 in time for the June 10 primary elections and take them down again on June 11.
Sanford Parks and Recreation Director Marcel Blouin said there would be hidden costs to the town in overtime while his employees set up the polling booths.
“I know we just did a lot of Legislature bashing, but in terms of our individual Legislators, in my conversations with them, they were very sympathetic,” Green said. “I think they did try to accommodate our needs and tried to make the law a little better than it turned out to be. I don’t want anyone to think folks representing Sanford weren’t working for us. They absolutely were.”
To contact Renee Worthing, email news@intheregister.com or 282-4337 ext. 240